British Columbia will use manual counts at assigned polling places and tabulators for several other ballot groups on Saturday, a split system Elections BC says suits a snap election’s short setup window.
Polls are scheduled to run from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. ET (8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific) Oct. 24. After they close, two election officials will count by hand the ballots cast at each voter’s assigned polling place. Candidates may have a representative present for each count, according to Elections BC’s 2026 Guide to Voting and Counting.
Tabulators will process advance-voting ballots, district electoral office ballots and in-district special-voting ballots during the initial count. Vote-by-mail ballots, assisted-telephone ballots and certain absentee ballots will be excluded from election-night results and counted later after additional integrity checks, Elections BC says.
At assigned polling places, officials first reconcile ballots issued and cast, then announce votes and record them on tally sheets, the guide says. The method has a precedent: Elections BC also used hand counts at those locations in the 2020 snap election and earlier provincial elections.
Tabulators first counted paper ballots in a B.C. provincial general election in 2024. By 9 p.m. Pacific (midnight ET) that year, Elections BC had reported 85% of preliminary results. At the same time in 2020, 13% had been reported under the manual count, according to the agency’s 2024 election report.
Elections BC ties the hand-count approach to the compressed timetable of a snap election, saying it needs to put voting services in place quickly. Advance, district electoral office, vote-by-mail and special voting largely follow the model used in 2024, the guide says.
Advance voting drew 891,348 ballots from Oct. 16 to 21, according to Elections BC’s preliminary tally. That amounted to about 23.8% of the 3,738,182 registered voters listed as of Oct. 14; the agency says the turnout figures may change.
Elections BC says preliminary results will follow after polls close Saturday.
